Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley which is found in a lot in baked goods, like bread. (Jenny Sparks, Loveland Reporter Herald file photo)

After years of different diagnoses, treatments and questions, my daily headaches finally went away. What ended the head and neck pain was a diet change: I stopped eating gluten.

In the fall of 2011, my freshman year of college at Colorado State University, I started to notice I got a headache almost every day. Caffeine or no caffeine, lots of sleep or not enough sleep, drinking water or not, I always got headaches. They would start at the top of my neck at the base of my head, and depending on the severity, would move over the top of my head.

I had recently hit my head snowboarding, so I started by seeing a concussion specialist. Massages, nerve relaxing pills and following all the rules did not help. I gave up for a while after that, but tried to avoid things like staring at a computer screen for too long or florescent lights because they seemed to be triggers.

I started seeing a physical therapist in the fall of 2013 for an ankle injury and asked her to try and fix my headaches as well. The multiple visits per week didn’t seem to help, and ended with getting an MRI which showed I had muscle spasms that caused my spinal cord in the neck to curve the wrong way.Read more…